The Georgia State University will initiate an eight-week, summer commuter, Young Scholars project in Chemistry with other interdisciplinary science components for 22 students entering grades 11 and 12. Each student will experience hands-on usage of a wide variety of modern laboratory instruments and equipment while working on three individual, relevant projects of decreasing structure. The first project involves recycling inorganic industrial wastes into useful high-temperature superconductor materials. The second project is a study of techniques to separate and identify organic compounds such as those which occur in natural fruit flavorings and perfumery oils. The group will choose a third mini-research project from three options offered including (a) a project to test new mixed ligand extraction agent systems for ability to separate and recover various toxic or vital metals from water solutions such as wastewater effluents, (b) using a recently synthesized organic color reagent to develop a spectrophotometric method for analysis of trace amounts of heavy metals in environmental samples, or (c) performing a wide variety of analyses to assess the quality of individual water or soil samples taken from the environment. The last four weeks of the project will find each student working about four hours per day in the laboratory of a research professor in one of the following science departments: chemistry, biology, physics or geology.
